LONDON — The first 400 flat-panel antennas developed by Redmond, Washington-based Kymeta Corp. have been shipped to customers in the past months as the company predicts 2018 to be the year when the long-awaited technology starts making impacts across a range of sectors that have not used satellite links before.

Speaking at the VSAT Global conference in here Sept. 20, Kymeta’s chief commercial officer Bill Marks said the company has received thousands of orders of its 70-centimeter Ku antennas and will start mass production next week on an assembly line in California.

“We have antennas in eight different platforms, in five different verticals, most of which are mobile, one is fixed,” Marks said. “We are seeing antennas going on trains, buses, boats and automobiles, construction sites, first responders and agriculture.”

Marks also confirmed his company has been talking to OneWeb and other LEO constellation developers. However, he refused to elaborate.

Also speaking at VSAT Global, David Garrood, chief strategy officer at Kymeta’s competitor Phasor Solutions, said his company is pursuing a similar timeline for introducing its own flat-panel antennas and foresees entering the commercial market in 2018.

“Sets are being fabricated as we speak, we will get them ready by the end of the year and then there will be a number of systems in real users’ hands next year,” he said. “2018 is going to be the real year when I suppose flat-panel antennas to really come into the market.”

Garrood said the company is currently testing its technology at a site in Yorkshire, U.K., simulating deployment on a mobile platform.

Garrood and Marks agreed flat-panel antennas, also called electronically steered antennas, will not, in the early stages, compete with conventional satellite dishes but rather target new markets that didn’t use satellite links before.

“There are lots of platforms that have not been able to take advantage of satellite before because of the nature of the platform,” said Marks. “Train is a good example of that. You can’t put a mechanically steered antenna on top of a train because in a tunnel it would get knocked off so we are seeing a great success in markets that have never really used satellite before.”

According to Marks, 19 percent of the antennas ordered from Kymeta are supposed to go to markets that have not used satellite before. He said the company is also considering developing a range of smaller sizes including 40-centimeter and 20-centimeter antennas.

The antennas, manufactured using similar technology used in the production of LCD displays, would also benefit satellite operators due to the simplicity of the steering mechanism, which completely lacks moving parts.

According to Marks, however, the greatest potential for the technology to expand is in the connected car sector.

“The automotive industry is moving towards satellite,” Marks said. “We are in conversations with large mobile operators that recognise that the connected car needs a satellite component in order to be successful. It’s a really interesting time for the industry.”

When questioned on affordability and performance of the technology, Marks compared the first-generation flat-panel antennas that are just entering the market to early mobile phones.

“It was expensive, it was heavy, the batteries were terrible but everybody when they first bought it thought it was a revolution and it changed their lives,” he said.

“The first flat panel antennas are going to revolutionize the industry, they are going to open new markets but they are not sold on performance. We are looking into markets that will be interested in the first generation of the product and we will continue innovating, improving performance, making it lighter, smaller.”

Flat-panel antennas, he said, will not be competing with parabolic dishes for several years.

Mark Steel, senior director of user terminal development at Inmarsat, who was on the same panel, questioned the 2018 timeframe.

“In 2014, we were hearing that it’s coming next year, same in 2015, same in 2016,” he said. “Let’s hope 2018 is real as it seems to be a recurrent theme that it’s coming next year.”

He also questioned the usability of the current systems for use on aircraft, which is one of the markets the makers hope to target.

“Over the past three years, we have been involved with probably 15 to 20 technologies and the bottom line is that it can’t do what we want,” Steel said. “It can’t meet our end-user requirements – the cost, the scalability, there have been a lot of issues around that. We can’t get what we want and then of course you’ve got this big price tag.”

Marks said he believed there is potential for future cost reduction through mass production on lines designed primarily to make LCD displays, of which there are hundreds around the world.

“One display line can manufacture 25,000 satellite antennas per day and there are hundreds and hundreds of display lines around the world,” he said. “The capability exists to build antennas at scale and that would allow us to offer prices that could be acceptable to consumers.”

NASA has awarded Kymeta’s government solutions division two grants via the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to develop small, space-based, low Size, Weight And Power (SWaP) flat panel Ka-band terminals for CubeSats and other Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.

“These grants will allow Kymeta government solutions to supply NASA with our proprietary metamaterials-based low SWaP flat panel solutions for satellite-to-satellite and satellite-to-ground/ground-to-satellite communications, starting with CubeSats, which are about the size of a loaf of bread,” said David Kervin, general manager and vice president of Kymeta government solutions.

Organizations receiving SBIR grants are required to develop solutions with practical significance that have both commercial and non-commercial applications. They also must provide the potential to fulfill NASA needs.

Kymeta’s announcement comes days after the grand finale of the Cassini Mission, noted for its groundbreaking discoveries using 20th century technology. “The Cassini Mission launched in Oct. 1997 with the best technology of the time,” said Kervin. “These NASA grants will further our ability to develop solutions to hard problems for government, military and commercial applications, wherever that technology may travel.”

Kymeta has spun out a new division, the Kalo Business Unit, in preparation for the launch of commercial availability of the service. The company joined forces with Intelsat in Q1 2017 to offer a new High Throughput Satellite (HTS) access service. Kalo leverages fully integrated KyWayterminals and mTenna Antenna Subsystem Modules (ASMs) to provide wireless mobile connectivity. The service uses the IntelsatOne Flex managed services platform, and will soon commercially offer a by-the-gigabyte pricing plan under the management of the Kalo Business Unit.

Dushyant Sukhija, Kymeta’s newly appointed senior vice president and general manager of the Kalo Business Unit, who joined Kymeta’s executive leadership team in July, will lead the division and the upcoming launch of the service.

According to Kymeta, the Kalo service will disrupt the communications industry by making satellite services easy to buy and use. “Satellite services today are expensive and difficult to buy,” said Sukhija. “Current satellite services customers often must predict their usage in advance. Imagine having to know exactly where you will be using your phone and how much data you will use three, six or even 36 months from now. With Kalo internet access services, we’re focused on taking the guesswork out of purchasing satellite services, and making it as easy as purchasing a cell phone data plan.”

Following its launch later this year, Kymeta aims to make Kalo services available to every industry, and is especially focused on offering mobile connectivity applications for industries on the move, including buses, airplanes, maritime vessels, trains and automobiles, as well as remote fixed applications and the Internet of Things (IoT). These industries have traditionally been difficult to connect due to the footprint, bulk and weight of traditional satellite dishes.

Kymeta and e3 Systems revealed that the White Rose of Drachs yacht successfully performed the first-ever motor yacht sea trials with Kymeta communications solutions over the last several months. Kymeta and e3 Systems worked with the owner, captain, and IT manager of the White Rose to perform the months-long sea trial, and outfitted the yacht with four Kymeta KyWay terminals.

Kymeta tested the terminals with various Maximum Committed Rate/Committed Information Rate (MIR/CIR) services from maritime satellite service providers, including Speedcast, which provided service in the Mediterranean. Upon completion of sea trials and commercial release of yacht solutions, Kymeta terminals will be bundled with Kymeta’s Kalo internet access services, powered by the IntelsatOne Flex for Maritime service. The terminals can also be outfitted with MIR/CIR services from service providers like Speedcast, Kymeta stated.

The trials presented Kymeta and e3 engineers with the opportunity to identify and replace various components — both hardware and software. As a software-defined antenna technology, Kymeta KyWay terminals used at the trial were remotely given improved functionality, which was not possible before with traditional mechanically steered antennas.

“We trialed multiple terminal configurations, ranging from single panel solutions to multiple panel solutions. We experienced a few practical installation issues, many of which already have been addressed by Kymeta, and we also realized that the network systems on yachts need to be designed and configured to work in tandem with the improved throughput that Kymeta solutions provide,” said Roger Horner, managing director at e3 Systems.

Projected to welcome between 100,000 and 500,000 visitors during the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, the Greenville, South Carolina’s police department is keeping its force connected with help from Redmond, Washington-based Kymeta. The company is taking its satellite-connected Toyota RAV4 on the road to provide field-trial mobile communications to the Greenville Police Department as cellular data networks become bogged down.

“We chose to provide this testbed service to Greenville because we recognized the significance of the need here,” said Tom Freeman, senior vice president of land mobile for Kymeta. “Cellular data coverage is a concern for cities along the path of totality nationwide, but of all the cities on the list, Greenville is expected to have one of the largest number of visitors.”

With a population of 68,000, Greenville has been recognized as one of the best places to view the 2017 total solar eclipse, gaining the attention of news media, eclipse chasers and NASA, which has an official viewing location at the Roper Mountain Science Center. This popularity, and the surge in visitors that could increase the city’s day-of population by up to seven times the norm, will impact communications systems.

“The significant increase in visitors will have an impact on cellular networks, which are likely to face decreased capacity, and that’s a problem,” said Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller. He anticipates the impact will be due to the increase in people uploading photos and video of the eclipse to social media networks. “Communication is critical to ensuring timely response to incidents and in keeping the public safe,” said Miller. “Having the extra testbed support Kymeta is offering will provide us with an additional means of communication.”

The Kymeta vehicle is equipped with a Kymeta KyWay terminal, the company’s mobile satellite terminal featuring mTenna technology, according to Freeman. The company’s road team is set to provide emergency mobile communication services to the Greenville Police Department before, during and after the eclipse event on Aug. 21.

“The eclipse will allow Kymeta to test our technology in a real-world situation where terrestrial communication networks are likely to be stretched beyond capacity,” said David Kervin, general manager and vice president of Kymeta Government Solutions. “Over the last several months, the Kymeta Government Solutions team has been performing extensive trials with military and law enforcement organizations, validating Kymeta technology as a force enabler. We appreciate that the City of Greenville IT team and police department have authorized Kymeta to use the eclipse as an opportunity to again put our technology to the test. Kymeta will use what we learn to make further improvements for our federal, state and local government customers.”

WASHINGTON — Satellite antenna startup Phasor Solutions has completed full system testing of its electronically steered, phased-array antenna, and is now preparing for commercial release next year.

David Helfgott, CEO of Phasor, told SpaceNews field testing remains as the only major milestone, which involves partners trialing the antennas in various mobile environments.

“We are planning for beta testing around the availability of our partners,” Helfgott said. “We plan to get that done this year and launch our product at the successful conclusion, which I expect would be as early as early 2018 or as late as Q2 2018 depending on the length of the beta test.”

Headquartered in Washington with a research hub in London, Phasor has designed a thin flat-panel antenna system that uses software to eliminate the need for mechanical systems, such as steering motors, pedestals and large, protective radome covers. The antenna’s core module is 2.5 centimeters thick, and the full terminal measures 6.4 centimeters thick when encapsulated with a radome. The company has been working on the antenna for around seven years.

Satellite industry observers have highlighted low-cost, electronically steered antennas as essential to unlocking a sizably larger customer base. Not unlike Kymeta, whose electronically steered antenna first started shipping this June, Phasor’s antennas have attracted several industry partners interested in testing the product and potentially fielding it to customers.

Fleet operator Intelsat, inflight connectivity provider Gogo and maritime connectivity providers OmniAccess and Harris CapRock all have partnered with Phasor on its antenna. Helfgott said Phasor has several other industry partners not yet announced.

Phasor’s antenna is at Technology Readiness Level-7, or TRL-7, on NASA’s one to nine scale for gauging a technology’s maturity, meaning prototype trials have been completed. Helfgott said Phasor tested its antennas using Intelsat’s satellite fleet. Phasor’s final testing is expected to occur over the coming months.

“Our first product is Ku-based. We will have a Ka-version to follow that in the future. The Ku-band product will first launch in maritime, then land-mobile, and then in aeronautical sequentially over the course of 2018 and into 2019,” he said.

The company’s modular antennas can conform to surfaces, such as the fuselage of an aircraft, and can be pieced together to generate large throughputs. Phasor says the price of its antenna is similar to a high-performance mechanically steered antenna.

Phasor bills its antenna as easier to install than parabolic VSATs, or Very Small Aperture Terminals, and less likely to break because of how it lacks moving parts. Regarding throughput, Helfgott said the antenna can downlink data at the same rate as a parabolic dish so long as the antenna apertures are the same size, and can surpass parabolic antennas on uplink data rates.

Helfgott said the antenna can also track multiple independent satellite beams, making it capable of tracking between the spot beams of high-throughput satellites and connecting with satellites in different orbits simultaneously. This feature has the attention of several low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite telecom startups, he said.

“We are talking to all of the major LEO operators,” Helfgott said. “Some of them we are in very advanced-stage discussions — I can’t disclose that yet — and some are fairly introductory. That covers a range of different missions. Some of these LEOs have wideband communications satellite network missions. Some of them are narrow-band burst-data [Internet of Things] types of applications. Some are even geospatial intelligence and they still need phased-array antennas for up and downlink, including auto-acquire and tracking functionality.”

Helfgott said he is not concerned about being second to market behind Redmond, Washington-based Kymeta, for whom Intelsat is bundling antennas with satellite capacity contracts in a product called KyWay. Intelsat and Sky Perfect Jsat have both invested in Kymeta, and fleet operators Inmarsat, O3b Networks and Telesat have all done antenna research with the company. Rather, Helfgott believes Kymeta’s success should buoy Phasor along the way.

“We want to see Kymeta succeed, and to disprove the naysayers,” Helfgott said. “We feel it is good for the product category.”

Helfgott said Phasor has raised $25 million since forming, which included a Series A funding round. The company has a Series B expected to close later this summer that Helfgott said will likely be oversubscribed. He declined to say the amount Phasor raised in its Series A or is pursuing for its Series B.

WASHINGTON — Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is considering ways to add multiple antennas to planes in order to let different satellite inflight connectivity providers serve the same aircraft simultaneously.

Mark Rich, vice president of Airbus’ connected fleet division, told SpaceNews June 9 at the Global Connected Aircraft Summit that one of the company’s big concerns with inflight connectivity is the reliability of the service, and one way Airbus might boost reliability on future aircraft is by enabling several antenna systems at once.

“From a reliability perspective, it may actually make sense to have multiple antennas on an aircraft so we can have multiple simultaneous connections with multiple different satellites with different services, and move the management of connectivity into the aircraft,” he said.

Airbus works with providers of inflight connectivity to bolt antenna systems onto planes, a process that can take an aircraft out of service for several days, costing airlines revenue. Suppliers of those systems — such as Gogo, Global Eagle, Panasonic, ViaSat and others — are striving to reduce the amount of time needed to complete those installations.

Rich said Airbus is interested in changing aircraft architectures to “have more of a common data signal processing capability that can connect to any satellite system.”

“Airline choice is a fundamental change in the architecture, so we are looking at how can we encourage or implement that,” he said.

Rich said Airbus is well aware that sporting multiple antennas and protective radomes on a single aircraft would add considerable weight and drag, requiring more fuel and making flight operations more expensive.

“That’s where we need new antenna technology,” he said, highlighting Kymeta, Phasor and Satixfy, three rising flat-panel antenna companies with lighter antennas that can conform more smoothly to an aircraft’s surface.

Rich acknowledged that there are still lots of challenges to having aircraft with more than one antenna system. His job, he said, is to look out five to 10 years forward at where connectivity will be, and try to make that vision a reality for Airbus.

“If you take a narrowbody aircraft, the impact of adding today’s satellite antenna system to that is like adding a free-loading passenger on every single flight of that aircraft, because of just the weight and the drag,” he said. “You are carrying around an additional passenger and paying for the fuel every time. We have to get past that, we have to reduce these things down to much less weight, drag and dollar impact, and then we can afford to put on more than one antenna to deal with this redundancy of systems.”

WASHINGTON — Panasonic Avionics, one of the largest providers of satellite-enabled broadband to aircraft, says the long-term viability of inflight connectivity as a moneymaker remains an open question.

Lower capacity costs, something buyers have typically praised, are acting as a double-edged sword, according to David Bruner, Panasonic Avionics’ vice president of global sales and marketing, thinning profit margins to the point of concern.

Growth is easy, but profit?

Bruner said Panasonic has just under 1,600 aircraft connected, and anticipates adding around 700 more this year out of a backlog of 2,500. A substantial number of the company’s customer airlines are located in the Asia-Pacific, including Singapore Airlines, Air China, and Taiwan-based Eva Air — a concentration that motivated Panasonic to become an anchor customer for the Eutelsat-172b satellite that launched June 1.

Once the satellite completes its electrically-propelled orbit raising and enters service, which Bruner estimated would be in November, Panasonic will use Ku-band high-throughput capacity for “the fastest growing area in aeronautical service, [and] also the fastest growing in maritime.”

“We need to deliver significant new capacity to this region to support the growth of mobility in this particular region. It just can’t come fast enough to meet the demand,” he said.

But even with that demand and the capacity investments Panasonic is making, Bruner said the price declines brought about by oversupply and the higher throughput of new satellite systems is actually squeezing inflight connectivity into a lower margin business.

“Prices are falling rapidly, but if you are a service provider like ourselves, you’ve got to position yourself so that you make a penny or two on every megabit you deliver,” he said. “Otherwise, the business is not sustainable. That is the biggest challenge in our marketplace today. Growth: not a problem. Profitability: a real problem.”

“Business is booming but no one is making money,” said Claude Rousseau, research director at Northern Sky Research, adding that inflight connectivity providers have a number of challenges to turning a profit that have yet to be worked out.

“It’s very capital intensive and the take rates are still too low. We see that the price for connectivity hasn’t moved much, except when it’s free, but then if it’s given for free somebody has to pay for it. In the end if it’s not the passenger, it will be the airline or the service provider, and in that latter case the service provider has a hard time recouping the money,” he said.

Bruner said Panasonic would be struggling itself, were it not for the success of its inflight entertainment business and technical services team. Competitor Global Eagle Entertainment also has a robust inflight entertainment business independent of satellite connectivity, along with maritime connectivity and other services through its acquisition of EMC. Gogo, another major inflight connectivity provider, is less diversified. Despite posting a 17 percent revenue increase as of March 31, the Chicago-based company has been operating at a loss since going public in 2013, and doesn’t expect to be cash-flow positive until 2019.

For Panasonic, Bruner said the company trusts market research reports indicating inflight connectivity will grow at double-digit percentages, but said whether that’s enough to ensure a positive return is still to be determined.

“Even with that growth rate, can you make a profit delivering this service to airlines? I think the jury is still out on this one. We all have to all figure it out,” he said.

Custom payloads and future capacity

Those doubts don’t mean Panasonic isn’t going full steam ahead with multiple capacity procurement projects. Panasonic has collaborated with satellite operators on designing payloads optimised for inflight connectivity, of which three are active: Intelsat-29e, SES-15 and Telstar 12 Vantage each have payloads Panasonic helped design. Bruner said another three Panasonic-influenced payloads are coming up this year. That trio will be have bespoke characteristics from Panasonic, which the company intends to lease the majority of the capacity.

Bruner said Panasonic is waiting longer to announce these payloads to prevent competitors from drafting behind the company’s work. The next big collaborative payload will also be for the Asia Pacific, he said, to augment Eutelsat-172b. He estimated Panasonic will use at least 60 percent of the capacity on that new satellite, which will be announced in the coming months.

“Our business model lets us layer new satellites and we’ll add more Ku-band capacity as we outgrow our current capabilities,”he said.

“We are not moving to become a satellite operator,” he said. “We work with a number of satellite operators and will continue to work with a number of satellite operators, mainly because these orbital slots and frequency rights are controlled by a number of different operators, and as we grow, we need more and more capacity and we can’t see ourselves locking into one or two.”

As the number of high-throughput satellites, commonly referred to as HTS satellites, increases in orbit, Panasonic is continuing to build out what it refers to as an “extreme high throughput” or “XTS” network to deliver more capacity to planes and maritime vessels.

Bruner said Panasonic is pursuing more “XTS” capacity, including the forthcoming Asia-Pacific payload, which involves layering higher-throughput capacity over dense areas of aviation and maritime traffic.

“We are doing the same thing in Europe, the Middle East and India, and we will also introduce XTS service in the Americas to provide coverage there,” he said. “The Americas is very difficult because massive capacity is needed, so the dollar values are higher. It is difficult to put all this together but it’s happening.”

Antennas and modems

Bruner said Panasonic’s two big antenna projects have both proven more difficult than initially expected, but that an upgraded modem will soon enable throughputs up to 26 times faster than Panasonic’s current modem.

Panasonic teamed with Boeing in 2014 to create a new phased array, electronically steered antenna, initially intended to market in 2016. Bruner said the result was an “incredibly good antenna,” but one with a low-volume pricetag of $1 million each, which was too expensive to compete with mechanically steered antennas.

For maritime, Panasonic struck up an exclusive partnership with Kymeta for its metamaterials antennas, but Bruner said that antenna “just doesn’t give the radio frequency performance that we need.”

Panasonic is still working with both companies on their respective antenna products, he said.

“All of these players have really good ideas, but nothing has materialized into a complete antenna subsystem that delivers what we need, particularly for aero,” he said. “Aero is the most demanding, most environmentally challenged vertical segment that needs the best of the solutions, and we’ll keep looking for a solution that meets our requirements.”

On the modem side, Bruner said satellite ground systems supplier Newtec in Belgium has produced a third-generation modem that Panasonic will be rolling out “as fast as we possibly can” in 2018 at teleports and on aircraft.

“For our customers that have been surviving on this first-generation modem that does about 15 Mbps, they will jump to about 250 to 400 Mbps,” he said, adding that airlines could add multiple modems per aircraft if desired.

Bruner said the new modem can switch seamlessly between beams and handle data and multicast video reception simultaneously. The modem is part of the Newtec Dialog multiservice platform, he said.

Originally, Panasonic and Newtec had a second-generation modem planned that would have been in the range of 60 to 80 Mbps, but the project took so long that Panasonic chose to cancel it. Southwest Airlines will be first to receive the system, he said, followed by a broader rollout in North America and then the rest of the world.

Ongoing Department of Justice investigation

Bruner said that none of Panasonic’s operations have stopped as a result of an ongoing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that parent company Panasonic Corp. disclosed in February.

Panasonic Avionics CEO Paul Margis and Chief Financial Officer Paul Bottiaux both left the company when the investigation was announced. The company filled those voids with Hideo Nakano, previously deputy CEO, and Seigo Tada, a Panasonic employee since 1985.

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Intelsat General (IGC) is constantly working to advance satellite-related technology, to improve performance and to introduce new services for our government customers. An area where exciting progress is being made is in antenna design, and one of the companies we're collaborating with is Kymeta.
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Last month’s budget proposal included terminating four planned or operational missions designed at least in part to collect climate-related data.

Scientists were worried even before the new administration took office about the potential loss of climate data, in part because of a perceived gap in the responsibilities of NASA and NOAA to study climate and weather. [New York Times]

Italian launch vehicle company Avio started trading on the Milan stock exchange Monday. Shares in Avio rose 11 percent in the first day of trading Monday on the Borsa Italiana before falling back. Avio listed on the exchange after a merger with investment vehicle Space2 SpA and the departure of private-equity funds. Avio, which is the prime contractor for the Vega small launch vehicle and part of the Ariane 6 program, believes being publicly listed will make it easier for the company to access capital for future programs. [Bloomberg]

Satellite antenna company Kymeta has raised more than $70 million in its latest funding round. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the company recently raised $73.5 million, bringing the total raised to date by the company to nearly $200 million. Among those investing in Kymeta is Intelsat, which said it played a minor role in this latest round. Intelsat and Kymeta announced a partnership last month that will use the Kymeta’s flat panel antennas to support a satellite broadband service. [GeekWire]

China plans to launch an experimental communications satellite on Wednesday. The Shijian-13 satellite, scheduled to launch at 7 a.m. Eastern, is a 4.5-ton satellite that will operate at 110.5 degrees east in GEO. The spacecraft will test Ka-band satellite broadband services and the use of electric propulsion. Shijian-13 will also test space-to-ground laser communications. [gbtimes]

An asteroid mining company got the royal treatment Monday. Prince Guillaume and Princess Stephanie of Luxembourg visited Planetary Resources, the Seattle-area company with long-term aspirations to obtain resources from asteroids. The government of Luxembourg invested more than $25 million into the company last year as part of its SpaceResources.lu initiative. The Luxembourg delegation, which also includes Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider, is visiting other space companies in the United States this week as well. [GeekWire]

NASA will announce new discoveries about ocean worlds in the solar system this week. The agency said Monday it will hold a press conference Wednesday involving scientists using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn’s moon Enceladus is thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface, based in part on plumes previously detected by Cassini, while Hubble observations have detected evidence for plumes emanating from Jupiter’s moon Europa, also thought to have a subsurface ocean. [Space.com]

Germany-based Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity is set to provide automotive telematics security solutions as early as this year, says Marcel Krumbholz, head of presales. And with 62 percent of U.S. consumers doubtful they will see a world with fully autonomous cars, companies specifically addressing the security needs of the connected car market couldn’t emerge at a better time.

The connected car market is seen as one of the next big growth opportunities for satellite companies. While the role satellite will play in this particular market is still open to question, with cars needing to be fully connected at all times to receive software updates, for example, the market in theory offers a great opportunity for satellite players to be part of the communications ecosystem servicing these vehicles. Companies such as Intelsat and Thuraya are two satellite companies, for example, which have spoken up as this being a market to watch, and Kymeta has already made headlines for its tests with Toyota.

Companies such as Chevrolet or Mercedes-Benz use telematics platforms to stay in contact with all of their cars outside in the world, allowing them to implement remote features like “installing updates and receiving messages about the car itself,” Krumbholz said. These platforms also track sensor data such as movement behavior and fuel consumption, information that can then be monetized in a variety of forms, ranging from Usage-Based Insurance (UBI), to fleet management, to Over-the-Air (OTA) customer services.

The opportunity for ROI is compelling for car vendors, of course, but Krumbholz pointed out that consumers also stand to benefit from more advanced telematics platforms. “For example, Volvo is testing network here in Germany. If a customer comes to the garage because they would like to repair something, the Volvo will directly connect to the Wi-Fi of the garage and they can read about errors and mistakes from this car,” he said. In other words, drivers and mechanics in the future won’t need to scratch their heads diagnosing a tricky mechanical issue; the car itself can tell you what part needs to be replaced.

Mobile operators such as Verizon are the real first-movers in this space, looking to tap new revenue potential by creating telematics platforms for automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). But because these platforms lack detailed security specifications and a standardized framework across the industry, they have become an attractive target for cybercriminals. Operators are thus forced to turn to expensive, personalized security solutions to protect data and ward off cyberattacks, and these are the customers Rohde & Schwarz hopes to serve.

As Krumbholz framed it, telematics platforms’ biggest vulnerability is the complicated network that comprises their architecture. “I go in the car and the Bluetooth on my phone … should connect to the entertainment system, and the entertainment system should have access to my video and audio files, and the contacts I can call,” Krumbholz said. The crux of the issue is that Bluetooth is just too easy to hack, he says, meaning cybercriminals have an easy portal to access and manipulate whatever information they want. In a worst-case scenario, a hacker could hijack a car’s telematics platform to gain control of its steering system, or “deactivate the brakes over this Bluetooth connection.”

Krumbholz highlighted two approaches to protecting these assets, one that Rohde & Schwarz hasn’t quite yet perfected, and another that the company is ready to implement commercially. The first approach is setting up a firewall inside the network of the car itself. Krumbholz said the biggest issue here is power consumption: the firewall gets turned on, then off, then on again along with the car, which creates vulnerabilities in its defenses after a few months. To overcome this hurdle, Krumbholz said Rohde & Schwarz is in talks with hardware companies to develop new chips and mainboards that will remain sustainable over long periods of time.

The second approach, which comprises the company’s R&S Pace 2 solution, is ensuring airtight communications between a car’s telematics platform and its data center. R&S Pace 2 is a software engine that functions somewhat like a selectively permeable membrane: operators can embed the engine into telematics platforms for more advanced Internet Protocol (IP) traffic analytics capabilities, specifically protocol validation, protocol encryption and application classification. “We are able to take a look inside and find out if this protocol is really this protocol or if there’s something behind [it],” he said, “We find out where’s the one, where’s the zero — and if [the protocol] is in the right form, we let it pass. If it is not, we block it.” Krumbholz said the company’s solution can build up a ruleset against suspicious commands and thus secure data transmissions between car and data center.

While cybersecurity technology is adapting quickly to meet the needs of the connected car market, Krumbholz believes companies that stand to benefit must push legislators to set industry standards. He expects Germany to be especially conducive due to its drive to have the number one automotive sector in the world, as well as the efforts of companies such as Audi and Volkswagen looking to mend their reputations in the public sphere.

ABS CEO Tom Choi has garnered a reputation for speaking unabashedly — so his somewhat harsh comments on the viability of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations came as no surprise during the SATELLITE 2017 Exhibition & Conference. During the conference’s final panel, “Visions of the Future Satellite Industry: Business Beyond SATELLITE 2017,” Choi reiterated his doubts about the goals some companies in the satellite industry are pushing to achieve.

According to Choi, companies rushing to build bigger High-Throughput Satellites (HTS) and launch mega-constellations into LEO are suffering from a “herd mentality … without really understanding how this capacity is going to get sold or where the customers are going to come from.”

“I always try to think about the number one thing: the customer. Who is the customer, how am I going to serve that customer, what technologies do I use to solve a customer problem? I just don’t understand why some of the networks are being designed the way they are,” Choi said, calling out OneWeb specifically as he had in previous panels that week. “You’ve heard me being vocally critical of OneWeb. If I was building a system to serve people, I would put maximum capacity over where those people are.”

While Choi believes all satellite operators have the same end-goal of bridging the “digital divide,” he thinks solving the issue will require innovation that extends beyond just providing global capacity, due to the different connectivity needs of different markets. One major hurdle, he says, is bringing down the cost of ground infrastructure.

As vice president of business development for iDirect, David Harrower is intimately aware of the limitations of ground networks, and agreed with Choi’s point. “What a lot of operators don’t anticipate is the ground network required. It’s a cost impact that is challenging for a lot of satellite operators,” he said. In order to make progress in the industry, Harrower thinks executives need to focus on improving the availability of low-cost terminals, as well as pushing for adoption of emerging technology such as Flat Panel Antennas (FPAs).

Unfortunately, the technology on the ground side simply isn’t evolving fast enough for the satellite industry to steal market share from terrestrial wireless competition, says Andrey Kirillovich, director for integration services and turnkey projects at Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC). “The ground segment is developing behind the development of the space segment. The main problem is the readiness of FPAs,” he said. FPAs such as Kymeta’s mTenna product line are only just now becoming commercially available, and the panelists agreed that such products will be key to the industry’s future growth.

“I think we have to look at antennas not as a commodity but as an enablement aspect,” said Harrower. “[They have] to be cheap, easy to install, and readily accessible. We would anticipate in the next two to three years you’re going to see terminals in the $100 range in the consumer market. The costs have to be there to enable machine-to-machine, Internet of Things (IoT), [and] connected cars.”

Still, Choi expressed doubt, arguing that providing connectivity via Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) will almost always be more profitable. “These phased array terminals are not going to go down to $20 or $30. I could go to a factory in Taiwan today and buy a VSAT antenna for operating in Ka-band for $60. That’s extremely affordable,” he said.

Consequently, according to Choi, ABS will continue to pursue GEO solutions to provide capacity to rural areas. “Our plans are to selectively target specific countries from GEO where we can bring a lot of capacity on a low cost basis,” he said. He highlighted Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as areas where ABS plans to target. “Their access to infrastructure is very low and we believe that’s where a low cost GEO service for residential broadband would be the most attractive. The DRC alone is probably almost 80 million people,” he said.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency, had one warning for companies solely interested in LEO: watch out for orbital debris. Because smaller satellites are more difficult to track and many lack deorbiting capabilities outside of atmospheric drag, Le Gall said the onus is on these companies to ensure their mega-constellations do not become space junk at the end of their lives.

“Governments that allow these systems to launch better take responsibility if these things break or the LEO arc is going to become a death zone,” Choi added.

As for the industry beyond the eternal LEO versus GEO debate, Vern Smith, vice president of communication satellites and new ventures at Lockheed Martin, said he believes the next big wave of innovation will emerge on the production side. He pointed out that historically, satellite manufacturers have built satellites custom to order depending on the client’s specific needs. In the future, he expects to see more standardization as manufacturers “productize things across multiple solutions,” using “common bus platforms across four or five solutions,” he said. In turn, this will significantly shorten the manufacturing process. “Five years out, I would argue that you could see production times on the order of six months,” Smith said.

Kymeta is on track to introduce its flat-panel satellite antennas in May. The company had planned to introduce the antennas in 2015 but were forced to redesign them after discovering the original rectangular antennas couldn’t send a receive signals with the same aperture. A new circular design solves that problem, and allow them to reach download speeds of 100 Mbps. The company has raised $144 million since 2012, including investments from satellite operators Intelsat and Sky Perfect JSAT. [SpaceNews]

North Korea says it has tested a new rocket engine it claims could be used to support its space program. State media announced over the weekend the successful test of the engine, saying it supports the development of future satellite launch vehicles. While many Western observers believe the test is linked to the country’s development of long-range ballistic missiles, at least one expert notes the engine doesn’t appear to be a good fit for any known North Korea missile programs, and instead may be for the second stage of a proposed launch vehicle. [Space.com]

NASA is not tweeting as much about its “Journey to Mars” these days. In the first two months of the Trump administration, NASA used the #JourneyToMars hashtag just once in its tweets from its flagship @NASA account, compared to an average of six times a month in the last half-year of the Obama administration. A NASA spokesman said the lack of use of the hashtag was not a deliberate decision reflecting a change in policy, noting that other NASA social media accounts have used it and that, in general, hashtags are not as effective in social media as they once were. [Ars Technica]

WASHINGTON — Kymeta will finally start shipping its first flat-panel antennas this spring, some five years after Microsoft founder Bill Gates first opened his wallet to help the startup bring thin, lightweight, low-power antennas to a satellite market hungry for mobility solutions.

The Redmond, Washington-based startup has raised $144 million since spinning off from Intellectual Ventures in 2012. Among customers awaiting Kymeta’s May release of its flat, beam-steering antenna system are Panasonic, Toyota, and armored car company Aurum Security.

Kymeta delayed its product release by about two years after discovering in 2015 that the rectangular antenna design it was working on at the time couldn’t send and receive signals with a single aperture, but would need two, driving up size and cost. The rectangular design also couldn’t leverage existing liquid crystal display manufacturing infrastructure, which would have made them more expensive to build, Bill Marks, chief commercial officer of Kymeta, told SpaceNews.

Kymeta teamed with electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp. in 2015 to mass produce its metamaterials-based antennas on the same product lines used to make LCD television sets. The circular design Kymeta chose instead rectified those issues, Marks said, and can reach downlink speeds greater than 100Mbps.

Kymeta’s antennas use electronic beam-steering instead of moving parts, and are considerably smaller than most mechanically steered antennas. Marks said the company chose to have two main products — the core “mTenna” subsystem module, and fully packaged “KyWay” terminals — to cater to markets that are familiar with satellite telecom and to design more products for markets where satellite is not present.

Global satellite fleet operator Intelsat of Luxembourg and the United States, and Sky Perfect JSAT in Japan revealed March 7 that they’re investing in Kymeta, with Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler joining Kymeta’s board of directors and JSAT preparing a demonstration of Kymeta’s antennas using its satellites.

Along with creating new opportunities in mobile connectivity, industry observers have also pointed out that low-cost, electronically steered antennas are likely a necessity for high-throughput non-geosynchronous constellations — especially in low-Earth orbit — where the satellites need to be tracked quickly as they cross the sky. O3b Networks, operator of a 12-satellite constellation in medium-Earth orbit, invested in Kymeta back in 2013.

Marks said markets such as maritime and aviation have companies like Intellian and Cobham that have a larger market presence as terminal distributors. For those markets, Kymeta will lean on existing players to graft the mTenna into their products.

“What we intend to do there is to sell antennas to them so that they can put their own flavor of a terminal wrapper around the antenna, and then they can sell it as part of their product suite,” he said.

For other nascent markets like the connected car and other ground transportation, Marks said Kymeta will use KyWay to create terminals.

“A good example is we have contracts with bus companies and train companies,” he explained. “Nobody really builds a flat-panel satellite terminal today, so we are building our own to address those markets, because there is no clear channel to enter those markets.”

Panasonic since mid-2016 has been working with Kymeta on a version of its antenna optimised for maritime. Similarly, Inmarsat and Honeywell teamed with Kymeta in 2015 to produce aviation-focused antennas. The biggest opportunity, however, is the connected car, Marks said.

“All of maritime represents 25,000 VSAT terminals. Toyota alone is 10.5 million a year. Other deals end up larger than maritime very rapidly,” he said.

Kymeta, Intelsat and Toyota are all partners on the connected car, and criss-crossed the continental U.S. in 2016 testing a Toyota 4Runner connected to Intelsat’s fleet via a Kymeta mTenna. In February, Kymeta said it was able to connect a car and stream video using a 20-centimeter mTenna connected to Intelsat’s satellite constellation.

Marks said Toyota is a shareholder and customer of Kymeta, but declined to say how much of the company they own, or how many antennas they would buy. Intelsat, which has teamed with Kymeta for much of its product development, has created a bundling service called Kalo that lets mTenna and KyWay customers buy satellite services in a fashion more akin to the cellular industry.

“Instead of buying bits per second or megahertz, you will buy bytes per month,” Marks said.

Kymeta and Intelsat have that product slated for release in the third quarter of 2017.

That change prompted rumors and speculation on why SES did not have its usual high-profile presence at the annual satellite trade show, which took place here March 6-9.

“There’s been quite a bit of scuttlebutt,” said an industry executive who asked not to be identified.

SES is only too happy to clear up any confusion.

The elephant not in the room“In our reflection of what we have to do this year, our priorities, what is missing, and where we therefore have to invest, having a booth on that show and having a seat on the elephant panel, these things were not priorities,” SES spokesman Markus Payer told SpaceNews. “When you look at what you spend compared to what you get, we had to set priorities.”

The “elephant panel” refers to the conference’s high-visibility session featuring global satellite fleet operator chief executives. The CEOs of Intelsat, Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Telesat and ViaSat were all there. The CEO of SES, which tied Intelsat as the world’s biggest satellite operator with $2.188 billion in revenue last year, was not.

Luxembourg-based SES maintains a presence in the metropolitan Washington area throughout the year. The firm has a large Washington office and the firm offers satellite communications services to U.S. government agencies through its subsidiary SES Government Solutions of Reston, Virginia.

SES Government Services was one of several aerospace companies to set up shop at hotels near the Satellite 2017 convention center. Credit: SpaceNews/Debra Werner

Top SES executives did attend the Satellite 2017 conference, including Ferdinand Kayser, chief commercial officer, Christophe De Hauwer, chief development officer, and Steve Collar, chairman of O3B Networks, which SES purchased in 2016. Pete Hoene, SES Government Solutions president and chief executive, also attended the conference.

“What we changed was the [SES] presence on the representative part of the show itself,” Payer said. “The expense and the energy it costs is a significant amount at the end of the day. It’s packages, it’s sponsoring, it’s material and film you need to produce. At the end, you make the calculation and say, ‘Is that what we want to spend for what we get.’”

Before SES executives decide to attend conferences or trade shows, they look at the firm’s internal statistics on the number of customer leads those events have generated in the past. Those calculations may prompt SES executives to attend the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or European Commission events in Brussels, Payer said.

“One thing is very clear: The times are over where we would sit in the satellite sector and say, ‘We have these nice things and one day people will call and contract capacity,’” Payer said. “We have to make huge, enormous efforts to go deep into the markets in which we operate.”

“Satellite innovation does not make sense if we don’t feel the pulse of those people who could actually be interested in that capacity,” Payer said. “And it’s not about capacity only. Customers want systems, architectures, end-to-end solutions. If you don’t understand deeply what these people not only want today but will want, you are not evolving your products.”

Like its parent company, SES Government Solutions played a smaller role in this year’s satellite conference than it has in previous years. In 2017, SES Government Solutions executives are attending events that focus entirely on the firm’s U.S. government customers, said spokeswoman Natalia Kossobokova.

“For example, during Satellite 2017, we were the exclusive underwriter for a Defense One event titled ‘Space and Satellites in the New Administration,’” Kossobokova said by email. That event, held at the Long View art gallery near the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, which housed Satellite 2017, “afforded SES Government Solutions an opportunity to learn from, and connect with our U.S. Government counterparts during the week of the conference.”

SES Government Solutions also met with customers in a meeting room the firm reserved at the nearby Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel.

Payer and Kossobokova said it’s too soon to say what role SES will play in next year’s trade show.

“We will make our decision for next year later in the year,” Payer said.

Kymeta executives, for their part, were pleased with the noteworthy location of their Satellite 2017 booth. The firm has exhibited at the satellite trade show for approximately five years but its 2017 booth was twice as large as its previous booths, said a Kymeta executive.

“We had a big announcement this week and we wanted to celebrate,” she said.

On March 7, Kymeta announced a partnership with Intelsat to offer a commercial broadband service, called KĀLO, that pairs Kymeta’s flat panel antennas and terminals with Intelsat’s global satellite network.

Overall, the annual satellite conference continues to grow with 14,500 people registered in 2017, roughly eight percent more than 2016. Exhibits also were up, with 339 companies purchasing booths in 2017, a seven percent increase from last year, Lindsey Fuller, aerospace events group show director for Access Intelligence, a marketing and publishing company based in Rockville, Maryland, said by email.

SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation announced that JSAT and Kymeta signed a strategic partnership agreement to provide new mobile satellite communications technology to the Japanese market, and also announced that the company has recently invested in Kymeta.

Kymeta has developed a satellite antenna technology that harnesses the traits of metamaterials. This electronic beamforming mTenna technology enables moving vehicles to leverage high throughput connectivity via satellite. JSAT expects the Kymeta mTenna will make it possible to provide high-throughput connectivity to mobile platforms such as emergency first response vehicles, transportation, Internet of Things (IoT) applications and more.

In addition, JSAT and Kymeta will pursue business development. As a part of this engagement, Kymeta will create solutions for JSAT’s current and future customer needs. The two companies are planning a Kymeta product demo in Japan this summer, which will be the first opportunity for Kymeta to demonstrate in Asia-Pacific.

Washington DC (SPX) Mar 09, 2017
Kymeta and Intelsat have joined forces to offer a new, groundbreaking, satellite service offering that is easy to buy and use. The new KALO service, which will become available in Q3 2017, will introduce a simplified way to buy and sell connectivity to customers and sectors that are currently unreached or underserved by terrestrial networks. KALO will change the way satellite services are purcha Перейти к новостиКлючевые слова:Intelsat, Kymeta

The Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) named the first annual Rising Five, the five NewSpace companies in the satellite industry that have made the most substantial progress over the past year. The 2017 Rising Five are Kymeta, OneWeb, Planet, Spire Global and Virgin Galactic.

“The Rising Five represent the society’s assessment of the progress made by innovative companies that are raising money, creating new technologies and pioneering new business models in this 60-year-old industry,” said Bryan McGuirk, chief commercial officer of Globecomm and SSPI chairman. “With so many new entrants in the market, the question is always who has the right idea, the right financing and the staying power to overcome the hurdles facing any new business and to find sustainable success. Our membership represents companies that know what it takes to succeed in one of the world’s most challenging technologies.”

An international editorial advisory board, including editors or publishers from Via Satellite, SatNews, SpaceNews, Satellite Executive Briefing, Satellite Evolution, Satellite Pro Middle East and SpaceWatch ME selected the top five upcoming companies featured below.

Kymeta Corporation, Ground Systems Sector:

Kymeta was spun out of Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding company, based on the metamaterials technology for electronic beam steering developed in that company’s labs. It was launched in 2013 with a $12 million investment from Bill Gates, Lux Capital and Liberty Global. Before the year was out, it closed a $50 million round from existing investors plus Osage University and Kresge Foundation. Early in 2014, the company won a $6.2 million engineering contract with Inmarsat to accelerate that company’s product development. Over the next two years, it entered a series of partnerships: with Intelsat for antennas optimized for Epic; with Airbus and Intellian to integrate Kymeta technology into maritime antennas; and with Sharp to manufacture Kymeta antennas using glass-on-glass technology pioneered for flat-panel displays. Commercial tests began in 2015 with Intelsat, including an 8,000-mile demonstration drive in a connected car. In 2016, Panasonic agreed to order a large number of antennas for maritime use, and Kymeta closed another $62 million in funding to finance its commercial introduction in 2017.

OneWeb, Communications Sector:

OneWeb emerged in 2014 from WorldVu. The company plans a $3.5 billion Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation of 700 satellites providing broadband connectivity worldwide including support for LTE, 3G and Wi-Fi terminals. It plans to launch its initial 10 satellites in early 2018 and the launch of broadband access in 2019. Projected applications include aeronautical connectivity, vehicle-based cell networks for first responders, direct service to homes and schools, and rural coverage for mobile operators. Its business model is based on mass production of microsatellites, patent-pending low-cost terminals, and “progressive-pitch” technology that claims to avoid interference with Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites. It has raised substantial sums from the Virgin Group, Qualcomm, Intelsat, Coca-Cola, and most recently $1.2 billion from a group led by SoftBank of Japan. It has contracted with Airbus to manufacture the spacecraft and Arianespace and Virgin Galactic for launch, and has opened a factory in Florida to manufacture the spacecraft.

Planet, Earth Observation Sector:

Founded in 2010, the company launched two demonstration Cubesats in 2013, when it also announced a plan to loft a constellation of 28 Earth Observation (EO) satellites. These were deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, when the company also raised $95 million in funding, bringing its total raised to $183 million. In July of that year, it acquired BlackBridge, a Canadian company that bought the German RapidEye EO smallsats (which went operational in 2009) out of bankruptcy in 2011. The company currently operates 63 spacecraft and claims to serve 100 customers. The spacecraft are in a continuous upgrade process (14 upgrades through August 2016) made possible by their nine to 18 month lifespan and low-cost launches. It has twice suffered loss of multiple satellites in launch failures but has remained in business. It remains privately held.

Spire Global, Earth Observation Sector:

The company was founded in 2012 to create ArduSat, a crowd-funded satellite launched in 2013. From that year through 2015, the company raised $66 million from venture investors. As of 2015, the company had launched four cubesats to conduct space-based experiments. It launched a further 17 through October 2016 through Nanoracks and Orbital’s Cygnus launcher. They are equipped with multiple sensors to conduct ship-tracking using Automatic Identification System (AIS), weather data collection using radio occultation, and air traffic tracking. The company focuses on turning this information into products including Sense (ship-tracking), a weather data portal and AirSafe (aircraft tracking) in a vertical market play. The company remains privately held and has offices in San Francisco, Glasgow, Singapore and Boulder.

Virgin Galactic, Launch Sector:

Virgin Galactic’s original business plan was for space tourism: suborbital flights to give people an experience of weightlessness aboard SpaceShipTwo. In 2012, the company announced plans for LauncherOne, with a goal of placing 200-300 kg in sun-synchronous orbit for under $10 million per mission. LauncherOne is carried to high altitude aboard an aircraft (originally White Knight Two, now a Boeing 747 nicknamed Cosmic Girl) and air-launched from there, similar to the Pegasus system of Orbital ATK. In 2015 the company established a Research and Development (R&D) and manufacturing center for LauncherOne in Long Beach, California, and it expects to begin test flights in 2017 of an improved launcher with 400 kg capacity. The manufacturing facility has a capacity to produce 20 to 30 rockets per year with a goal to conduct three missions per month. Virgin Galactic has won a 39-satellite contract from OneWeb, Venture Class Launch Services contract from NASA, and a letter of intent from Millennium Space Systems. It is targeting 2018 for the start of commercial services.

The Rising Five were announced at SSPI’s annual Chairman’s Reception, an invitation-only reception for C-Level executives of the satellite industry gathered in Washington D.C. for the SATELLITE 2017 Conference and Exhibition. Together with a general reception for other attendees, it opens the Hall of Fame Benefit Dinner, where SSPI inducts four new members to its Satellite Hall of Fame, who will join members from Arthur C. Clarke and Harold Rosen to Rene Anselmo, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Mark Dankberg and Dave Thompson.

Intelsat announced that it has acquired an equity stake in Kymeta, and that Stephen Spengler, Intelsat’s chief executive officer, has joined Kymeta’s board of directors. The two companies are partnering together on a new service called Kālo.

The new Kālo service, which will become available in the third quarter, will introduce a simplified way to buy and sell connectivity to customers and sectors that are currently unreached or underserved by terrestrial networks. According to the companies involved, Kālo will change the way satellite services are purchased by direct users, integrators and service providers because it will be sold much like cellular services are purchased.

WASHINGTON — Facebook wants to help the satellite industry drive down costs on user equipment so it can leverage space technology to bring internet access to the rest of the planet.

Wesley Wong, the social media network’s point-man for strategic technology partnerships and sourcing, said March 7 that Facebook continues to view satellite as one of the best ways to bridge the digital divide, and wants to collaborate with more satellite companies to reach that desired outcome.

“If there are opportunities to collaborate with industry to innovate and drive standardization to help reduce that cost, we’d be more than willing to evaluate,” Wong said at the Satellite 2017 conference here.

Facebook procured satellite capacity on four satellites in 2015 — SES’s Astra 2G, 2B and 4A, and Amos-6, the latter being a Spacecom satellite on which Eutelsat had sold the Ka-band payload. The September 2016 loss of Amos-6 in a SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion during a routine fueling test appeared to rattle Facebook’s satellite ambitions. Founder Mark Zuckerberg publicly voiced his disappointment, and went on to highlight other technologies, such as drones. In a recent earnings call, SES said it is still working closely with Facebook to bring satellite connectivity to Africa.

In a rare public appearance before the satellite industry, Facebook affirmed that it hasn’t lost faith in satellite’s potential for connecting the masses.

“We are still evaluating how to accomplish our mission of connecting the entire world,” Wong said. “We do share in the belief that the space industry can play a very important role in reaching every last individual out there. Whether it’s standardization to achieve scale or some other element, we are here to support in whatever way we can to meet our mission.”

Wong emphasized standardizing satellite user equipment as a way to lower the cost for units and make the technology more accessible. Steve McCabe, CEO of ScotSat, a maritime satellite equipment and service provider, pointed to the fragmented nature of satellite communications as one of the big reasons why there is such a range of unique, sometimes costly, equipment options.

“Historically, I think what’s happened is satellite has grown from lots of different types of industries with lots of different types of requirements, and maybe that’s held back standardization somewhat,” he said. “Maybe looking forward now with the advent of Intelsat and OneWeb and the various other large networks that are coming up, maybe there is an opportunity now to try and push standardization forward.”

Wong said Facebook has actively tried to address technological innovation, but has come realize that technology is only part of the solution. Access to stable electricity, electronic devices, and even proving the worth of internet access to those without it have also proven to be challenges.

Regarding the satellite industry, Wong said achieving scale in the production of user equipment might be more important than standardization — though standardization would certainly help with achieving said scale — because higher production volumes should result in lower costs.

“The biggest denominator in all things cost-related is the more scale that we can get out there,” he said. “And for our mission of trying to connect the remaining three or four billion people out there, that’s a lot of scale, and [the] satellite industry we believe is one of the best ways to aggregate all that demand across rural regions or close to rural regions because we can reach all those places that fiber can’t.”

Kymeta, a flat panel antenna maker with a product based on meta-materials, says that scale is a core tenant of its market strategy. The company announced March 7 that its antenna, known as the mTenna, would be available in mid-2017.

Kymeta’s manufacturing partner is Sharp Corp., the Japan-based electronics manufacturer. Sharp is producing the Kymeta antennas on the same manufacturing lines as liquid crystal display television screens, enabling mass production without investing in new infrastructure.

“In order to get scale, we had to find the manufacturing capacity available. That pushes us into a standardization with our own product. That’s why we leverage display infrastructure. That’s our contribution to standardization and how we drop prices,” said Bill Marks, chief commercial officer of Kymeta.

VSAT equipment provider Newtec CEO Thomas Van den Driessche noted that end-user technology has come down in price, but on more of a cost per megabit-level than a cost per terminal.

“When we made our first consumer modems maybe 10 years ago, VSAT broadband was a couple of megabits maximum,” he said. “Now for the same cost or less we talk about 100Mbps [on forward links], 50Mbps return, or something like that. So the cost has gone down in terms of capex per megabit.”

Wong said Facebook is willing not only to work with the industry, but to put its own resources into making satellite technology more practical for the social media network in achieving its goals. Facebook’s connectivity goals could serve as a catalyst on their own in gaining scale, he said.

“When you talk about [connecting] every last individual in the world, what else more is there beyond that to create the mass market?” he said.

Kymeta will start selling in May its lightweight flat-panel antennas, meant to bring fast satellite-transmitted internet connections to cars, trains and boats. It will also sell the internet data plans in a partnership announced Tuesday with Intelsat. Перейти к новостиКлючевые слова:Kymeta

Kymeta plans to tackle both the issues of limited coverage and capacity in the mobile space with its long-awaited mTenna product line, which the company intends to release this coming May. Nathan Kundtz, chief executive officer of Kymeta, also told Via Satellite that the company plans to go one step further by partnering with Intelsat to introduce Kalo, a suite of network services supporting the satellite antenna.

Mobile communications has run into a roadblock, as the limitations of broadband networks have made it difficult for existing technology to satisfy our growing connectivity needs. If you’re in a boat or a plane, or even driving outside the range of those terrestrial broadband networks, you lose the connectivity so many of us rely on. And let’s not forget the ever-looming issue of congestion: spectrum is a shared but limited resource, and competition for it has sent the price tag skyrocketing.

Kundtz believes the introduction of the mTenna line is a transformative moment for the mobile communications industry for a number of reasons. The first is fairly straightforward: “This is not only the first time a Flat Panel Antenna (FPA) will be commercially available, but the world’s largest satellite operator has put together a network to support it,” he said. “It’s important to recognize that all of the conversations around FPAs have been around what is being developed and not what is here. This is the first time you’re hearing somebody say ‘it’s here’.”

There certainly have been numerous efforts and billions of dollars poured into research to make this kind of technology commercially viable, but as Kundtz notes, it’s a difficult endeavor. “We really had to go back to fundamental science and come up with a completely new approach,” he said. “Just about everybody pursues FPAs in the same way, which they say it’s going to be a phased array architecture and we need to make cheaper phase shifters. That just doesn’t work. It’s a broken strategy because it doesn’t address the reliability of those systems, and it doesn’t address the complexity that drives costs for the system outside of the phase shifting elements themselves.”

Specifically, some of the biggest hurdles included getting rid of moving parts, which frequently break, and minimizing weight and power consumption, all while ensuring the antenna is still cost-effective to manufacture. To achieve this, Kymeta went back to the drawing board and invented an entirely new architecture for its mTenna product line. As Via Satellite previously reported, the antenna uses reconfigurable, holographic Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology for all its active regions, which allows Kymeta to reduce production costs by sharing production lines with TV manufacturers such as Sharp.

Kymeta also recently announced that its smaller 20 cm antenna successfully connected to the Intelsat satellite constellation. The antenna’s design coupled with support provided by the company’s future network services means Kymeta has unlocked the opportunity to bring satellite capacity to a myriad of markets, including “automotive, buses, rail, IoT, maritime, and aeronautical,” Kundtz said.

Cybersecurity is always a topic of interest when discussing satellite communications, and is especially relevant as Kymeta hopes to connect “civilian armored vehicles” used by government officials, for example. Kundtz offered two reassurances: one, that satellites naturally lend themselves to a more secure environment because the entry points to user terminals are physically controlled (unlike a cellular network). “And if you want to restrict that access from the broader internet it is possible to do so,” he said. Two, Kundtz is confident Intelsat has the experience necessary to oversee the sensitive information in its networks, due to its ongoing contracts with the government and armed forces.

As for the future, Kundtz is optimistic the mTenna product line will become standard for mobile communications as its network services grow and the technology evolves. “Unlike a lot of the other technology that you see in the satellite world, this is generation one. There’s a lot that we will do over time to continue to refine and improve [it], and make it better, cheaper, and faster,” he said.

Kymeta also plans to expand its product line with a high-band antenna that will address connectivity over Asia-Pacific, as well as a combiner (an aggregate of multiple antennas) in hopes of pursuing scalability into difference performance levels. Both products are expected to launch as early as the third quarter of this year.

In the week before the SATELLITE 2017 Conference & Exhibition, one of the biggest stories in our industry’s recent history broke with the news that Intelsat and OneWeb would merge, and Softbank would become a key player behind the new combined entity. SoftBank will buy voting and non-voting shares in the combined company for $1.7 billion in cash and take a 39.9 percent voting stake.

The deal doesn’t come as a complete surprise given that Intelsat and OneWeb have had a partnership since 2015. However, it does signal a new era for Intelsat. In a momentous week for the operator, Via Satellite caught up with Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler to assess the key strategic rationale behind the merger.

VIA SATELLITE: From an Intelsat perspective, what is the significance of this deal?

Spengler: We were a founding investor at OneWeb. We made an initial investment in 2015 establishing a partnership with them to develop both Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) services together as well as certain market segments. So, we have worked very closely with them over the last couple of years. As time has moved on, I think we have become increasingly convinced that there is a real opportunity to bring a new set of services to the marketplace that leverage both LEO and GEO network architecture and all of the services that could be associated with those.

For us, it is a continuation and acceleration of the strategy that we have been on, which is to bring next-generation services forward and deliver better performing capabilities with better economics and better price points for our customers. This will help stimulate growth for higher volume networks, and that also incorporates technology on the ground that makes it simple to access our services on a more cost-effective basis. It ties into some of the other things we are doing in the antenna area. It all ties together.

VIA SATELLITE: Can you give us some background on how this deal came about?

Spengler: We have developed a very close working relationship with OneWeb at multiple levels of our organization over the last couple of years. Then when SoftBank stepped in and became an investor in OneWeb, and the fact that SoftBank is the master distributor of the OneWeb capacity, it was natural that we had engagement with them at that time. Then things developed from that point to the announcement.

I would say it was a very quick process in terms of reaching an understanding from the parties regarding the strategic logic of the combination. I think that OneWeb and Intelsat recognized that we shared a vision for delivering affordable broadband on a global basis. I think that industrial logic developed pretty quickly. For an agreement of this type, there are a lot of details and a lot of work to put it all together.

VIA SATELLITE: Was it a case for Intelsat that being in GEO was no longer enough to fulfill your long-term ambitions?

Spengler: GEO is what we have had and “grown up with” and where our spectrum rights lie. I think we have always recognized that, in an evolving telecoms world, we have to have our eyes open to other approaches, other technologies and other aspects of the broader marketplace and the ecosystem of telecommunications. That includes looking at other orbits, other spectrum and frequency bands. It includes looking at other technologies that may be outside of satellite specifically.

One of the interesting aspects of this combination is that Qualcomm is a current partner and owner of OneWeb and will become a shareholder of Intelsat when this deal is consummated. I think it is exciting to bring other elements into it.

Maybe GEO isn’t enough to satisfy today’s requirements, but the ground systems have not been enough either. So, it is really trying to push different elements in the broader telecommunications landscape and to drive them together for future customer requirements.

VIA SATELLITE: You have SES with O3b, yourselves and OneWeb, Telesat looking to do something in LEO. This is a very interesting trend. Is the standalone global GEO satellite operator now a thing of the past?

Spengler: I don’t know if it is a thing of the past. Different operators will have different strategies depending on customers they serve, and their aspirations and what they want to do as a company and how they want to grow. But, I will say that having a combined GEO and LEO architecture or using multiple orbits gives a company the ability to leverage the inherent strengths of each one of the constellations. In our case, because Intelsat and OneWeb’s networks are mainly Ku-band, we are able to leverage the same frequency bands for fully integrated and interoperable services. We can construct those services where GEO is used where it is most advantageous, and LEO is used where it is most advantageous, and we can optimize that solution for a given application.

VIA SATELLITE: Is SoftBank the most powerful company now in the satellite sector? What role will they have in the decision making process?

Spengler: SoftBank will hold positions on our board and it will assign three out of the seven board positions. They will have a nearly 40 percent ownership of Intelsat at any given time, at least initially. As an arrangement they have in place with OneWeb, they have a role as the master distributor of OneWeb capacity. So, SoftBank will play an important role in the future. In this transaction, they are investing $1.7 billion into the new company. That is going to be used to fund a liability management/debt exchange exercise over the next 90 days. That transaction is a contingent part of the deal that has to be achieved for the deal to be completed. So, SoftBank is going to play a pretty significant role in a number of different ways. I think it is a great indication of their view of what Intelsat and OneWeb can do together, and that satellite communication services of this type can play a meaningful role in the telecommunications landscape.

VIA SATELLITE: How will your job as CEO change in this new combined entity?

Spengler: We have been on a path of transformation over the past few years. We have been focusing on bringing our Intelsat Epic satellites to market and, as we have expanded our relationship with OneWeb, we have engaged with antenna technologies on the ground. We have centered our organizational attention on innovation, the development of new services, and development of strategies to open up new segments, and faster growing segments in the new broader marketplace.

With OneWeb as part of the organization, I would say it is another energy injection into our strategy. I think there will be some great collaborative synergies that come out of that, in terms of bringing a lot of the creativity and entrepreneurial ideas from OneWeb into Intelsat, which has also been working very hard on innovation itself.

My objective is to capture the energy from both parts of the future company and make sure we can create an organization that is customer-focused and focused on the future in terms of applications and services that are really going to be impactful around the world. We will continue on the mission to build out the OneWeb service and then architect the future network that incorporates the OneWeb architecture, the Intelsat GEO architecture and drive forward the services that are going to be differentiating over the longer term. I am excited about it and I think our team is excited about it. I understand the folks at OneWeb are also excited. So, I think it is an interesting, exciting future ahead of us.

VIA SATELLITE: You mentioned about broadband and we are in a data-centric era now with lots of powerful HTS going up. Is there enough demand for all of this capacity?

Spengler: If you look at some of the base statistics that Cisco reports on a regular basis, there are all kinds of statistics, but in one of their most recent reports, it said that IP data traffic is tripling every three years. That is really massive growth. That IP data is a global phenomenon. It is something that will be aided by the connectivity that satellite communications can provide, as long as we are able to provide the performance and the economics, and the right kind of access.

We absolutely believe there is a great market opportunity to expand the existing sectors that are using satellite communications today, whether it is broadband connectivity to mobile platforms or corporate networks or government networks or even media networks to newer applications. We think there is a huge opportunity going forward to connect vehicles, whether cars or other vehicles, or IoT-type applications on a global, ubiquitous basis with satellite services.

I think there are real market opportunities ahead; it would be incorrect to look at it through today’s lens of supply and demand to anticipate what is in the future. If we get the formula right in terms of what the offering is to the customers, there will be a huge amount of demand in the future.

VIA SATELLITE: Given its debt issue, did Intelsat need a deal like to this to ensure a successful long-term future?

Spengler: We have been managing our high level of debt for a number of years. Our debt load has not kept us from investing more than $2 billion in Intelsat Epic — few companies can make that kind of commitment. The capital structure has not kept us from making strategic investments that we have made in OneWeb, and the partnerships we have made with Phasor and Kymeta, among others. So, we have been able to do the things we have wanted to do strategically in order to build the services for our customers.

This particular opportunity is a strategic deal with OneWeb. We have the support of SoftBank in this transaction as well, to fund a debt exchange that reduces our debt load and reduces the debt to a level where we feel it is very manageable, and allow us to be in a position to stimulate more growth. I think it is the right thing to do for our company, both strategically and financially. We are very excited about all elements of this transaction, both the strategic elements, but also what it can do for our financial strength over the long-term.

VIA SATELLITE: Is there anything you would like to add?

Spengler: The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) states that there are 4 billion people un-connected in the world. Our mission is to bring affordable broadband on a global basis to all customers and applications around the world. That is a shared mission and vision of Intelsat and OneWeb. We think this combination provides a great approach to achieving that important mission.

Now, CAV manufacturers and integrators will be able to deliver global connectivity, on the go, that their customers demand, without impacting the natural design lines of the vehicle. This means anyone from VIPs, to government officials, to royalty, will have access to high bandwidth connectivity wherever they go that is invisible, secure, and reliable - even in remote places.

"Kymeta is thrilled to be working with Aurum Security, one of the leading civilian armored vehicle integrators in the world, known for its commitment to the highest levels of threat survival, to bring advanced satellite connectivity solutions to their customers," said Tom Freeman, Senior Vice President Land Mobile, Kymeta.

"The Kymeta mTennau7 mobile satellite terminal will provide continuous connectivity to our customers for their productivity and security benefits; furthermore, it is affordable, and does not draw unwanted attention," said Andre Uschakow, Managing Director, Aurum Security.

"Terrestrial cellular networks are easily disrupted and hacked leaving the convoy blind and vulnerable. Satellite systems are notoriously difficult to compromise, and with Kymeta mTenna technology, we will be able to deliver secure, high-throughput, satellite-based internet access."

Kymeta's small, lightweight, low power, flat-panel satellite terminal will fit invisibly between the Flat-panel SATCOM for civilian-armored vehiclesr and roof of a variety of vehicles to provide reliable internet access anywhere with a view of the sky. This is important for CAV integrators who want to deliver the latest technology, without compromising the natural aesthetics of the vehicle or highlighting which vehicle in a convoy is the communications hub.

It also provides access where terrestrial networks are unavailable, and eliminates the threat of lost communication during catastrophes should terrestrial networks go down. Today's connectivity solutions limit CAV and VIP vehicle integrators to the crowded cellular networks that are less secure, easily jammed and compromised, and unable to scale globally or across international borders.

WASHINGTON — Global in-flight connectivity provider Panasonic Avionics of California is the subject of a U.S. corruption and securities probe, parent company Panasonic Corp. of Japan disclosed Feb. 2.

The probe comes as many airlines are making long-term decisions on in-flight connectivity providers.

Panasonic disclosed the probe the same day the company announced the immediate departures of Panasonic Avionics CEO Paul Margis and Chief Financial Officer Seigo Tada. They’ve been replaced by Hideo Nakano, who was deputy CEO, and Paul Bottiaux, who takes over as CFO while retaining his financial controller role at Panasonic North America.

Panasonic said the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Panasonic Avionics under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other securities related laws.

“Panasonic has been cooperating with the authorities, and has recently engaged in discussions with the DOJ and SEC with a view towards resolving the matter,” Panasonic Corp. said in a Dec. 2 statement. “Currently it is not possible to make a reasonable estimate of the specific impact of this issue on Panasonic’s consolidated financial results. Further information requiring disclosure will be provided at the appropriate time.”

Panasonic Avionics did not respond to a SpaceNews request for comment.

Panasonic Avionics is one of the top providers of satellite-based inflight entertainment and connectivity services, with approximately 70 percent of the seat-back entertainment market and an estimated 1,300 aircraft equipped for its in-flight connectivity service, plus 2,200 aircraft waiting for installation, according Giles Thorne, an analyst with Jefferies International Equity.

That makes Panasonic Avionics the world’s second largest in-flight connectivity provider behind Gogo’s 2,629 aircraft and ahead of Global Eagle and ViaSat, which provide in-flight connectivity for 776 and 533 aircraft, respectively, according to Thorne. Inmarsat, also among the top providers, does not disclose its number of installed aircraft.

Thorne, in a Feb. 2 research note sent to investors, said the federal probe “could stall [Panasonic Avionics’] commercial momentum.”

“This is a critical point in the cycle given decisions made now on service providers will likely set the direction of the market for the next 5-10 years” Thorne wrote.

Panasonic Avionics has been purchasing large quantities of satellite capacity from satellite operators around the world, including Luxembourg-based Intelsat and SES, France-based Eutelsat and Canada’s Telesat, and has a memorandum of understanding with Yahsat in the United Arab Emirates to jointly explore a future satellite constellation covering the Middle East.

Thorne said the federal probe could also make waves for Panasonic’s maritime business.

“It’s also worth noting this could impact [Panasonic Avionics’] maritime ambitions,” he said, noting that the company “had also pushed more heavily into maritime of late” with its March 2015 purchase of remote-connectivity provider ITC Global, expanding its portfolio to include the maritime, energy and mining markets. The company also has a distribution agreement with SES and an antenna agreement with Kymeta.

Redmond WA (SPX) Jan 31, 2017
Kymeta has announced plans to work with Aurum Security GmbH to bring Kymeta mTenna high-throughput satellite connectivity to VIP and civilian armored vehicles (CAV).
Now, CAV manufacturers and integrators will be able to deliver global connectivity, on the go, that their customers demand, without impacting the natural design lines of the vehicle. This means anyone from VIPs, to government Перейти к новостиКлючевые слова:Kymeta

[Via Satellite 01-25-2017] Kymeta has announced plans to work with Aurum Security to bring Kymeta mTenna High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) connectivity to VIP and Civilian Armored Vehicles (CAV). According to a statement released by Kymeta, with the new antenna CAV manufacturers and integrators will be able to deliver global mobile connectivity without impacting the natural design lines of the vehicle.

Kymeta mTenna satellite solutions for CAVs will become commercially available in the second quarter of 2017.

[Via Satellite 11-23-2016] As consumers look to cut the cord on their cable providers and make the switch to contract-free Over-The-Top (OTT) video platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, traditional unicast delivery methods are proving inefficient as OTT video consumption skyrockets, slowing delivery and hoisting prices. The Chicago-based company V-Satcast, launched in July 2015, is in the process of addressing this congestion and price hike by developing hybrid broadcast/broadband OTT multicast streaming platform with the aim to quell the OTT digital video bottleneck and streamline delivery, enabling the further proliferation of OTT.

Lead by Executive Chairman Vern Fotheringham, former CEO of Leosat and Kymeta, V-Satcast’s system allows users to stream edge-cached digital video content, such as Netflix, directly from their home or local storage.

“Video is truly the pig going through the python. It is giant files, and when you try to access them through remotely hosted data centers where you have millions of replicated copies of exactly the same file being downloaded in millions of one-to-one unicast legacy session oriented [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] TCP-IP internet, it is proving to be massively expensive as a distribution medium,” Fotheringham told Via Satellite.

And OTT video consumption is only expected to grow, with Cisco Systems anticipating that video will exceed 80 percent of all internet traffic by 2018. Moreover, the migration to HD, 4K, 8K, 3-D and extremely high resolution video applications such as Virtual Reality (VR) stands to exceed the capacity of existing Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

“The problem is in that first and last mile and how much contention there is for the available bandwidth. If you’re part of the lucky 5 percent of U.S. consumers that get your ISP services via fiber, you’re looking good. If you’re in the next 16 to 20 percent that enjoys a very high quality hybrid fiber co-axial cable infrastructure in your neighborhood, you’re also looking pretty good. But if you’re in the other 80 percent of Americans that are using some form of a shared, overbooked ISP service, whether that’s a cable loop carrier or an independent telco or cellular operator using your ISP in the radio access network, you are going to have some serious challenges keeping up with capacity, and that means the operators,” said Fotheringham.

Moreover, the OTT video market is still poised for growth, with OTT service users in the U.S. alone expected to jump from a reported 173 million in 2014 to nearly 200 million users in 2019, according to a survey by eMarketer. Fotheringham believes that consumers will be faced with a worsening quality of service as more people start participating in OTT video consumption on demand.

“The reason it’s working fairly well so far is because so few of us are actually using it. If you look at the penetration of OTT video across the country you will find we are in a 35 to 40 percent penetration range of the addressable market. If you go peel back some of the analysis that has been done by the Internet Advertising Bureau, who aim to dissemble what’s in the OTT video world, in reality, those already converted are only using OTT for about one-third of their video consumption. When you have one-third of the people using OTT video via their ISP for about one-third of their video consumption, that is a relatively modest percentage of the overall attempts at login and downloading across the internet,” said Fotheringham.

To address this, V-Satcast aims to pre-position tens of thousands of video files at the consumer edge. The system plugs into existing contribution networks that are cloud-hosted in the same way that current OTT video is hosted in virtual instances with Amazon Web Services and other hosting environments. Video creators or distributors upload their content to the V-Satcast cloud-based hosting platform and those upstream libraries are then organized and delivered to V-Satcast’s satellite uplinks and delivered initially to a U.S. footprint where the capacity is distributed nationwide into consumer receivers.

“What we have done is taken a couple of the trends, the growing demand for streaming video on demand, the super efficiencies of satellite multicasting to take that IP video and send the same information to millions of people at the same time and piggybacking and standing on the shoulders of what is the demand for over-the-top video,” said Fotheringham.

The company is working with Intelsat as its strategic vendor for the space segment and leveraging Intelsat’s ground facilities to deliver the network. Currently, V-SatCast is working with a number of vendors to build consumer-facing edge devices in which to store large caches that can be integrated seamlessly into the satellite receivers. Fotheringham expects to have the caches ready for market circa late 2017. The company is also working to introduce wholesale satellite Content Delivery Network (CDN) services for second- and third-tier ISPs by the first quarter of next year.

“We go all the way to the consumer edge, ultimately, and because we’re building a network that can go all the way to the consumer edge, we get a wholesale CDN for free,” said Fotheringham. “Our same infrastructure and our same distribution network can also go a long way at removing the burden of the transit fees that the smaller players are having to pay to support the appetite and interest that their ISP customers have to stream video.”

While the platform is currently on its way to being introduced in the U.S., in the long term Fotheringham believes it will have a larger application in the developing world where broadband internet does not yet exist.

“Just look at the Amazons, Ali Babas, etc., e-commerce is on the rise dramatically, but those broadband e-commerce portals have a very, very difficult time finding their way out into the marketplace,” said Fotheringham. In the future, he believes V-Satcast will be able to pre-position components of the broadband internet in local caches in developing countries. The caches will be prepositioned via satellite, but access to those broadband files will be local, and the consumer, using their 2G cellphone or Wi-Fi-enabled device, will be able to access those files locally using narrowband internet connectivity.

For now, however, the company is working to release the platform as soon as possible in order to leverage its time-to-market advantage in the U.S.

“What we’re doing is not proprietary, it will be — and I believe should be — replicated by a number of other operators. The [Direct-to-Home] DTH players could certainly deploy these types of services if they so desire … We are just running as fast as we can to make sure that we have the first mover advantage.”

[Via Satellite 10-14-2016] Mobility is one of the satellite industry’s new favorite words, now that connectivity is viewed as a must have for vehicles and vessels around the world. To capture that demand, several companies are working on new technologies and products, and shared about these at the Global VSAT Forum’s (GVF) Applied Innovation Conference Oct. 13. Here Via Satellite shares our top five findings from the conference.

1. Hughes Wants Future HTS to be Very Flexible

Hughes envisions having High Throughput Satellites (HTS) that enable the company to readily service multiple applications and not be limited to one or two verticals. Dan Lozada, VP of international sales at Hughes, said that for the company’s role as a service provider, Hughes wants future systems to use a combination of space and ground technology that enable flexibility in serving different markets.

“What you are going to see … is a satellite platform that has different types of applications all blended into a technology mix. It’s a little bit different than designing the satellite with only the aero or only consumer base. Because we are launching satellites every two to three years, we know we have to be careful not to select only one or two markets and then not have proper solutions for different ones,” he said.

Lozada said Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes Network Systems, has a vision for the company in terms of HTS. In February, Kaul said Hughes was “working very hard on Jupiter 3,” as the operator’s next generation HTS system. He estimated at the time that an announcement related to a satellite manufacturer would likely be made in the ensuing months. Eight months later, Hughes and parent company EchoStar have yet to make a public decision regarding Jupiter 3.

“The whole company is lined up in terms of what we are going to do for growing our consumer business, growing our mobility business, and part of that is also increasing the enterprise part of what we do,” added Lozada.

In Hughes’ business as a provider of technology to other satellite and telecommunications companies, Lozada said the company is involved in providing technology to High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) systems like what Google is working on, but added that Hughes does not plan to create a HAPS service of its own. Hughes next HTS satellite, Jupiter 2, is slated to launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket.

2. SSL has First In-Orbit Servicing Contract

Space Systems Loral (SSL) has a contract to provide in-orbit servicing with an undisclosed commercial customer, VP of Business Development, Karl Clausing said. Through parent company MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), SSL has significant experience in space robotics, coupled with its own contracts for satellite servicing technologies with NASA and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Clausing said the contract is essentially an agreement “to buy once the service is available.” Right now, SSL still needs to prove if the business case is viable.

“The final business case is still out there, whether we fund this ourselves or bring in some venture capital or some other capital, or we work as a partnership. That’s still to be determined for this particular servicer. In terms of the proximity operations, several of the operators have looked at this and believe we have done our due diligence and believe that this is all feasible,” he said.

The first customer is not buying the entire capacity of the servicer, which SSL has yet to name, but only a portion of it. Clausing estimated at least three to five missions with the servicer would likely be enough to go forward with the project. He added that the servicer fits in with the long term vision of a “persistent platform,” where instead of operators continually buying new satellites, they could instead launch new payloads and have them replace outdated technology right there in space. Two other companies, Orbital ATK and Effective Space Solutions have also announced contracts for in-orbit servicing this year.

3. CyberESI Customer Base is Roughly One-Quarter Satellite Companies

Andrew Silberstein, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of CyberESI, a managed security service provider, estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of his company’s business now comes from the satellite industry. He said CyberESI is working increasingly with teleports and satellite operations centers, which are now prime targets for cyber criminals.

“Satellite communications and teleports, believe it or not, are a major threat vector for these adversaries for a lot of reasons,” he explained. “One is the ubiquitous nature of satellite communications. We have seen that firsthand both in satellite operations centers and teleports, and these kind of attacks don’t happen once a month — these happen almost on a daily basis. So if you are prepared for that, you can take action and mitigate risk, but without that, very likely there are issues going on either within your operations or within a particular teleport.”

Silberstein said security incidents grew at a 66 percent Calculated Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in 2015, that 170 million malware incidents affected 10,000 organizations in one year alone, and that attackers took minutes or less to compromise systems in 93 percent of cases. He said to truly protect networks — satellite included — visibility into the network itself is a must.

“These companies that are breached, they all have firewalls, they all have anti-viruses, so there is an important message here. The message is that those lines of defense do not stop attackers. Obviously they are getting in within minutes, so if you just have firewalls on the front door and you’ve got anti-virus on the end-points, that’s not going to stop them; something else is needed,” he said.

4. AvL Technologies Researching Flat Panel Antenna Technology

AvL Technologies is beginning to wade into the field of flat-panel antennas, according to Dave Provencher, VP and director of business development. While gauging the opportunity in land mobility to be low due to line-of-sight issues caused by buildings and structures, for maritime and aero he said there are very visible market applications.

“The answer is yes,” Provencher said in response to a query about if AvL is considering making phased array or electronically steered antennas, “but right now we are watching very carefully what’s happening with Phasor and Kymeta and some of the other companies.”

AvL has had high demand for its existing antenna solutions, so much so that the company last month opened a 60,000 square foot multi-tenant manufacturing facility to produce at higher volumes. The company also released a new line of fixed Earth station antennas last week. Provencher said AvL is beginning to research flat-panel antennas, but only on a limited basis.

“We have some steady contracts with universities right now, but it’s such a large investment for a relatively small company to do that so I don’t see us developing anything in house, but doing it in conjunction with [partners],” he said.

5. Kratos RT Logic Creating a “Roaming” Capability Between Government and Commercial Satellites

Kratos’ RT Logic division is studying how to create a product that would let government customers leverage both milsatcom and comsatcom resources with the same system. Such a technology, according to Mark Dale, business development director at RT Logic, could enable government users to more flexibly use satellite communications.

“The idea is to let the government use satcom capability for roaming like a cellphone: you can either use a government satellite or a commercial satellite network,” he said.

The system would require a multi-modem terminal that could tap into different satellite networks using an open architecture, Dale said. He described the system as using several modems, military gateways and a control system to manage milsatcom, commercial leased bandwidth and commercial managed networks.

Dale said the concept for this “roaming” capability comes from military leadership at the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). Without such Department of Defense (DOD) support, he said the project would probably be too farfetched.

“The government itself is seeing this,” he said. “They absolutely have to change the way they access satellite capacity.”

[Via Satellite 10-13-2016] Kymeta has announced performance results of a weeklong live demonstration at the Monaco Yacht Show. The company realized data rates of 65 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up, and also demonstrated 2.9 dB additional gain when combining two Kymeta mTennau7 Antenna Subsystem Modules (ASMs). The demonstration represents a major milestone for the company, which aims to begin pilot production in December.

During the demonstration, Kymeta mTennau7 ASMs simultaneously received eight live Panasonic multicast eXTV channels, performed multiple live Skype video sessions, multiple HD and Ultra-HD Netflix video sessions, and provided Wi-Fi access to an average of 80 users at any one time during the show. The demonstration also confirmed the low-power consumption of the Kymeta mTenna technology, drawing only 12 watts of power per ASM.

“The demonstration of the maritime product throughout the Monaco Yacht Show will be closely followed by further product testing on various vessel types in December and continue in early 2017 through commercial availability in Q2 2017,” said Hakan Olsson, vice president of maritime at Kymeta.

Kymeta has built an ecosystem of partners to deliver the mTenna technology to the maritime industry. Intelsat is a primary satellite provider partner for satellite bandwidth, and the Monaco demonstration leveraged the Panasonic satellite network for high-speed internet access. Kymeta also used an iDirect 9350 modem during the show, and Intellian is a key maritime integration partner for the Kymeta mTenna technology.

[Via Satellite 09-21-2016] Kymeta, manufacturer of the meta-materials-based mTenna, has formed a new aviation partnership with antenna solutions supplier Tecom. The two companies will merge Kymeta’s flat-panel satellite antenna technology into an aviation-grade terminal to provide Ku-band satellite connectivity for commercial airliners and business jets.

The Tecom partnership is Kymeta’s latest expansion into providing satellite-based connectivity for aircraft since it was founded in Redmond, Washington, in 2012, introducing an antenna for the aviation market with no moving parts. Kymeta is the antenna supplier for Inmarsat‘s Global Xpress (GX) Ka-band aviation network with Honeywell‘s onboard terminals. Now, under the new agreement with Tecom, Kymeta is looking to bring its mTenna technology to Ku-band satellites.

“We’ve already accomplished some demonstration of our terminal working on Ku-band networks. We’ve done that on the Toyota 4 Runner, which has achieved over 30,000 miles of testing primarily in North America with a Ku-band antenna installed in the roof of the vehicle so it’s not visible from the outside. Our partnership with Tecom is to start designing this technology — the Kymeta antenna technology — for aircraft applications and uses,” Steve Sybeldon, senior business development director for aviation at Kymeta, told Via Satellite sister publication Avionics Magazine.

Sybeldon said one of his company’s biggest concerns is with defining the unique design, features and capabilities of its flat-panel antenna technology moving forward, and to ensure that business and commercial aviation operators realize that it is not actually a phased-array antenna. Most phased-array antennas are able to scan quicker than mechanical antennas because they are electronically steerable. While Kymeta’s mTenna technology is also electronically steerable, it is Thin Film Transistor Technology (TFT), not phased-array technology, that enables it said Sybeldon.

“We are often thrown into that category of phased-array antenna, but it’s important to realize that we’re not that. Our antenna is flat panel, it has no moving parts, and it does steer the beam electronically, but very differently than phased-array solutions. Phased-array antennas require a lot of power consumption, and because of the profile and lay out of the elements of the phased-array design, generally it cannot combine transmit and receive capabilities into the same aperture. We can accomplish those things through our Kymeta flat panel. TFT is the technology that we use, and because of TFT we are able to get a density of elements that lets us transmit and receive from the same aperture very efficiently,” said Sybeldon.

Over the last year, Kymeta has made a significant research and development effort around differentiating its technology from the legacy “big bump” mechanically steered antennas that are still in service on many commercial airliners today, according to Sybeldon. Kymeta wants its combined solution with Tecom to provide a lighter and lower profile installation structure, although the company will look to use the standard ARINC 791 radomes mounting structure, at least initially.

“Very commonly in service today we see an antenna mounted under an ARINC 791 radomes, the standard 791 mounting structure that has the steerable aperture that’s underneath it. So, we think it would be efficient for us to use that same profile and mounting structure already approved as ARINC 791, and yet be able to reduce the profile of that radome, [and thus] come in with a much lower profile radome within that mounting structure,” said Sybeldon.

The next major focus for Kymeta will be establishing the DO-160 environmental airworthiness for the Antenna Switch Module (ASM) that it is producing, and eventually obtaining a Standard Type Certificate (STC) for the complete solution it is developing with Tecom.

“Going forward we can develop a very customized Kymeta antenna and looking out five years or more — it would take that long to get designed and flying and certified — we see a much more efficient structure. Realistically, prior to having a product ready for certification, we will have something that we could demonstrate on an experimental aircraft or on a government aircraft by the end of next year,” said Sybeldon.

[Via Satellite 06-17-2016] Kymeta plans to release the first commercial units of its meta-materials technology based mTenna in 2017. The software-defined electronically steered antenna is anticipated to open new markets for satellite connectivity and broaden those where satellite has a presence today.

The mTenna has evolved over the course of its development, delaying introduction but creating a product Kymeta executives believe will be significantly more capable than the originally conceived version. These changes include a transition last year from a rectilinear design, but has now shifted to a cylindrical one — an architecture the company described as making the antenna “work exponentially better” than the 2014 iteration. The mTenna development kits last year were based on Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology, but in an interview with Via Satellite, Kymeta President and CEO Nathan Kundtz said the company shifted to building the antennas based on Thin-Film-Transistor (TFT) technology used for Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs).

Because the mTenna’s active layer is similar to an LCD screen, Kymeta is using television manufacturer Sharp’s TFT production lines to produce the antennas. Kundtz said Kymeta started building mTennas with Sharp around the end of last year.

“We are in the middle of productizing that technology,” said Kundtz. “We have gone through two alpha spins, we will go through two more beta spins this year, and intend to release to pilot manufacturing in December of this year. We will have limited availability early in 2017.”

The first commercial version of the mTenna will measure 70cm and support Ku-band communications. Kymeta shipped Sharp-produced alpha versions of the product to partners and customers last year. Its first debut took place at the Detroit Auto Show, followed by an Intelsat-supported connected car drive to the SATELLITE 2016 Conference and Exhibition in March. Kymeta tested the antenna through more than 20,000 miles of driving on a Toyota 4Runner, and also completed a demo on a yacht.

Kundtz said he anticipates Kymeta will be the first company to offer a commercially viable electronically scanned flat panel antenna devoid of any moving parts. At the same time, he expects the growing number of phased array antennas soon to enter the market will not be able to reach Kymeta in terms of price and capability.

“The only other contenders I’m aware of doing electronically scanned antennas are using more or less conventional phased array approaches. They are trying to make the phase shifters less expensive. At the same time, they are not addressing the core issues with that architecture, in particular issues with the power consumption. In addition, what makes those systems expensive is the cost of the full module and the buildup of the full system. As far as I know, we are the only ones to do closed loop tracking on the antenna and have a complete system to which a Block UpConverter (BUC), Low Noise Block downconverter (LNB) and modem can be added to form a full mobile solution,” he explained.

He added that Kymeta is the only company to have completed transmit and receive using one aperture. Phased arrays require two antennas, he said, resulting in the need to decide between tradeoffs of additional cost, size, weight and power consumption. Regarding throughput, Kundtz said this depends more on the space segment than the antenna, which can get tens of Mbps through a single aperture with Intelsat’s EpicNG High Throughput Satellites (HTS). He said antennas can be combined in a scalable manner to reach desired throughputs.

The connected car, specifically, Kundtz describes as an entirely new market for satellite. He said that automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are “highly incentivized” to leverage satellite connectivity even over cellular networks.

“A lot of the data that needs to be pushed to the car looks more like sending television signals,” he said. “You are sending the same data to lots of people, and people don’t broadcast television over cellular. They use satellite for that, or cable, and you can’t use cable to the car. So satellite has a huge economic advantage to anything where you are going to multicast or broadcast, which is what a lot of the data services look like to the car, whether that is software updates, entertainment, or high density mapping that will be required not only now but for autonomous vehicles in the future.”

Satellite’s ability to multicast also brings about a cybersecurity benefit, he said.

“From a security perspective, when you have a large unicast presence like a cellular network, every single node on that network is a potential threat,” he added. “It’s a potential vector that can be hacked. So for those elements that are most sensitive, when you are providing safety-critical software updates, being in an environment where the physical signal is something that can be controlled by teleport is a tremendous advantage.”

Kymeta has multiple partnerships to bring the mTenna to different markets. For maritime, the company is partnered with Panasonic Avionics and Intellian; for aviation, Honeywell and Inmarsat; and for land mobile, UIEvolution, Intelsat and Toyota. Kundtz said he expects the antenna, thanks to its small size and ease of installation, among other details, will enable connectivity on fishing vessels, pleasure-craft and a wider range of aircraft. In land mobile, he said the antenna should open up rail transportation. Kymeta is also pursuing opportunities with the Internet of Things (IoT), oil and gas, agriculture, and Non-Geosynchronous (NGSO) satellite communications.

[Via Satellite 05-27-2016] Panasonic Avionics’ acquisition of ITC Global last year took many in the industry by surprise when announced at the SATELLITE 2015 Conference & Exhibition. The deal brought together one of the industry’s most prominent In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) providers with one of its most well known providers of remote connectivity for the energy, mining and maritime markets.

The ITC Global acquisition officially completed five months later in August 2015, but both the changes that followed after and the discussions that preceded it made for one of the year’s more unique Merger and Acquisition (M&A) moves according to Joe Spytek, CEO of ITC Global. Spytek told Via Satellite that while the combination probably caught many observers off guard, people now realize why it made sense.

“In the case of Panasonic buying ITC Global, it was more of the engineering skillset and the methodology of doing business that ITC Global brought to the table in terms of putting the customer at the center of everything we do, building bespoke, custom networks versus the larger scale, more global ‘ISP in the sky’ type mentality that this unit of Panasonic had,” he said.

Spytek said there is a significant amount of overlap between heavily used maritime routes and popular flight paths, creating a lot of synergy between the satellite coverage of both companies. At the time of acquisition, Panasonic covered 99 percent of airline flight hours, which equated to 98 percent of maritime traffic routes, according to the company.

Panasonic Avionics, being a large purchaser of satellite capacity, has often worked collaboratively with satellite operators to design payloads for future use. The company has reserved capacity on Intelsat’s EpicNG satellites Intelsat 29e and 33e, Telesat’s Telstar 12 Vantage, on Eutelsat’s upcoming Eutelsat 172b satellite, and on SES’ future SES 14 and 15 spacecraft. While a lot of the main focus for these deals was IFC, ITC Global will reap the benefits in maritime.

“There is overlap but it is not exact, and the design of the satellites would be potentially different if you were just thinking of one or the other. But since — and frankly well in advance of the acquisition — we were already starting to talk about what those designs would now look like with incorporating other verticals into this network,” said Spytek.

In March this year Panasonic Avionics extended the reach of its broadband communications and digital entertainment services to maritime — one of ITC Global’s core markets. Spytek said ITC Global is planning a big push further into the maritime segment, with investments in companies like Kymeta expected to grow the addressable market for satellite.

“In the maritime vertical we have seen very significant growth,” he said. “This is the one with the most synergies with Panasonic, and we are able to bring some of the resources of Panasonic to bear to expand in the maritime market pretty aggressively. There are a lot of things we will be doing in maritime that will catapult us to the forefront in a number of verticals in the maritime space over the next couple of years.”

Another area of greater crossover is with cybersecurity. Because ITC Global is considered a connectivity provider to critical infrastructure, the company has long been required to meet the same rigorous cybersecurity requirements as Panasonic. Spytek said the company has a team consisting of roughly two dozen people that actively monitor the network for threats, as well as create proactive services. ITC Global has not productized these services, but Spytek said that they would sell them eventually.

Spytek said much of the impetus for better cybersecurity has come from mining and energy sectors, and less from maritime and yachting. He said he has been “amazed” by the lackadaisical attitude of many in the satellite industry toward cyber threats. That mentality is changing swiftly today, but Spytek said there is still a dearth of knowledge and concern.

“Many of the major Requests for Proposals (RFPs) we have responded to in the last three to five years have had a cybersecurity component. They at least want to see what our policies are and what our internal controls are, but I would say pretty wide swaths of the customer base still don’t understand what the world of threats really consists of. There are still a lot of gaps in our industry that need to be addressed,” he said.

The oil and gas market, despite current economic conditions, remains ITC Global’s largest sector. Spytek said there is “significant weakness” in the land-based energy market, which spread to the more mature offshore markets where it is more expensive and difficult to do business. He described it as a tough operating environment, but one that ITC Global has been somewhat sheltered from because the company is less exposed to some of the more difficult markets.

“We were really focusing more on some of the emerging areas of the world like Africa, the Asia Pacific and some others. While the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea have been hit really hard, there are certainly pockets of strength, and we see Africa, with West Africa in particular and the Middle East as [stronger],” he said.

As evidence of this, ITC Global recently signed an 84-month contract to provide connectivity for two Saipem Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels in Western Africa. Spytek said ITC Global designs custom networks and works with customers in such a way that projects can take a lengthy amount of time to turn into contracts, but once they do they usually stay.